


Patches

by icewhisper



Series: The Truth Of It All [3]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Gen, Post-Ishval
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,334
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23855548
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icewhisper/pseuds/icewhisper
Summary: After everything, all Roy could do was learn how to live again. It takes time.
Relationships: Maes Hughes & Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye & Maes Hughes & Roy Mustang, Riza Hawkeye & Roy Mustang
Series: The Truth Of It All [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1695760
Comments: 8
Kudos: 72





	Patches

“I’m sorry,” he whispered to Maes as his friend helped him into his jacket.

“I know,” his friend murmured, fingers working to do the first button of the jacket, but no more. He left it draped over Roy’s shoulders otherwise and clasped his neck with both hands. “Just don’t give this Dominic guy a hard time, alright? He sounds like a piece of work.”

Roy nodded and tilted his head back, leaning into the hands at the back of his neck. “I’ll try.”

Maes wrinkled his nose at the non-promise. “I’ll be out there in a week. I’ve just… There’s the whole…”

“Maes, I  _ know _ . Go meet her parents and see if you can fool them into liking you so you can get her dad’s blessing. I’ll be fine.”

“Riza-”

“-is going to come after the surgeries. I don’t  _ want _ other people there when I do it.” He didn’t. He wasn’t sure he even wanted them there while he was recovering from getting the ports installed. Two arms. Two surgeries, because Dominic had refused to do them both at once, not when he was only just released from the hospital. From a Central City hospital to a small clinic in Rush Valley, he’d be trading out one style of sterile pajamas for a second and he…

God, he wasn’t sure he was ready for it. The memories of the Gate and Truth’s too-wide grin still haunted his dreams as much as the horror when he realized both his arms were gone.

He needed to do it, though. He needed his arms. He needed access to his alchemy. He needed… Hell, he needed to  _ live _ . If Truth had decided there wasn’t a point in killing him in trade for his victims, there had to be some reason for that, right? If there was no reason – if Truth had just left him to live so he could suffer – he’d lose his mind.

“You’re sure?”

He forced as much of a smile as he could muster. “I’ll be fine.”

The surgeries were as bad as he thought they’d be.

He didn’t remember much of the month that followed.

Riza was there when they attached the arms. Dominic hadn’t wanted her in the room when they did it, but she’d left her jacket on a chair and got up onto the bed with him. Pulled him close so his head lay in her lap and she could smooth his hair off his forehead.

“Just focus on me,” she told him before Dominic and his son moved in unison to attach the arms.

He  _ screamed _ .

“Focus on me,” Riza kept saying, repeating it over and over as the pain made his eyes roll back. “Focus on me, Roy. Just focus on me…”

She was still saying it when he passed out.

The new arms felt different.

It was a stupid thing to think, he figured. Of  _ course _ they wouldn’t feel the same. Automail was heavier than flesh and bone. It was foreign, but as he walked down the streets with Riza and Satella, he looked at the other people. The other limbs.

When he was still constructing the arms, Dominic had asked him about weaponry inside. Guns. Knives. All Roy had asked was for him to add some extra compounds into the fingertips – iron, cerium neodymium, praseodymium, magnesium, lanthanum – as he closed his eyes and dreamed of familiar transmutation circles that felt like warmth and home.

“I have a theory,” he told Maes and Riza when the arms were attached and he’d started to find his way around with them. He was still clumsy, but it was more than he’d had before they were attached, he had to remember.

“You going to explain what that theory is?” Maes asked with a furrowed brow. Concerned or not, it didn’t ward off the excited gleam in his eye that said his friend was still flying high in the rush of his and Gracia’s engagement. “Because I need you to  _ not _ blow yourself up, Roy. I don’t have anyone else who can be my best man.”

“Because no one else can put up with you,” Roy teased and used his new hands to give Maes a little shove. The man moved with it and rolled his eyes, but he didn’t recoil at the touch the way he had when the weather got too dry and his nose had started bleeding.

“Which is why you should  _ tell me _ what you’re planning.” It was supposed to be teasing, but he could hear the nerves underneath.

Roy paused and looked around to make sure they were alone before he said, “I think I might be able to do alchemy without a circle now.”

Six months after the arms were attached and he thought he had enough control, he tried. It wasn’t fire alchemy – not yet, too dangerous to use for a  _ test _ – but he clapped his hands to close the circuit, pressed metal hands to a block of lead, and watched it turn to gold.

It was child’s play, but Maes’ eyes went wide.

“That,” Riza said slowly, “was not what I was expecting.”

He went back to work weeks later with his ignition gloves on his hands. People asked, at first, about them, but he only ever gave the white fabric a cursory glance and told them  _ you can never be too careful _ . Better to let people think he was overly cautious now than to let them know what he could do. He’d never met anyone before who could do alchemy without a circle and they couldn’t risk the questions that would be raised if someone saw.

The questions died off fairly quickly as people seemed to settle back into routine, but he never did quite like the look Fuhrer Bradley started giving him.

One year after the day he faced Truth, he had Riza and Maes meet him on the property Riza had never been able to make herself sell after she emptied her father’s house. There, they sat around, whiskey in hand, as he dropped every book and every note he had on human transmutation into a pile.

He clapped to concentrate the compounds in his fingertips.

Clapped again and snapped in the next second.

The paper went up and he settled in beside them to watch it burn.

“Are you okay?” Maes asked him after a few minutes.

He stared down at his hands, fire dimly reflecting in the metal, and considered. It wasn’t where he thought he’d be. A year ago, he’d stared down notes and books that told him it was a sucide mission and decided to do it anyway. He didn’t regret the attempt so much as he regretted that it hadn’t worked. The people he killed were still dead and the guilt was still there – probably always would be – but he had arms and a path he could take to try and keep anything like Ishval from happening again.

He thought of the Elrics back in Resembool – of Alphonse with his soul trapped in armor and of Edward in the wheelchair – and still didn’t understand. He’d tried to bring back as many people as he could and failed. He’d lost his arms for it and he understood his own price, but he didn’t think he’d ever understand how the Elrics could lose so much when all they'd been were children who wanted their mother.

Maes was still mad at him for it and Riza had been her particular brand of silent the whole train ride home that told him she was angry, but they were children with a choice, now. He didn’t regret handing them back some of the control they’d lost when they put hands to a circle and left parts of themselves behind.

“Yeah,” he said and tossed back the rest of his glass so he could refill it again. He topped Riza’s off for good measure since it was starting to look low. Maes had still barely touched his. “Yeah. I’m okay.”

The End


End file.
